Article March 6, 1948 Issue

TREAT YOURSELF DAILY

WILLIAM CURTIS COFFMAN

God has endowed each of us with the ability to express His divine power in our daily life. But in order to do this, one must maintain a sense of man's conscious union with God, eternal Mind. For when one realizes God's ever-Presence —that He is closer than the atmosphere or the sunlight—he begins to demonstrate his spiritual unity with the Father. To reach and maintain such mental elevation and clarity is the purpose of daily prayer for oneself. "You have simply to preserve a scientific, positive sense of unity with your divine source," writes Mary Baker Eddy in "Pulpit and Press" (p. 4), "and daily demonstrate this."

A teacher once told her students to do their mental work the first thing in the morning before visiting with friends or meeting the public. It was stressed that this would give them a spiritual poise which could not otherwise be attained. Their thought would thus be lifted to the consciousness of their unity with Spirit, the perfection of being.

One of the first requirements in prayer for oneself is to cast fear out of thought. Fear is an enemy to progress. It begins to disappear as the fact that all reality is God and His idea becomes established in consciousness. A student may aid his progress by daily realizing man's superiority to old age, accident, disease, death, and all error, and with his denial of these should come an affirmation of the spiritual reality that man is spiritual and lives in Spirit, God. Latent error should be recognized as having no place in man's consciousness, and any aggressive evil suggestion which might be clamoring for a hearing should be silenced. A cursory blanket denial of error is not alone sufficient. Denial of error's claims should be specific, and specific spiritual truths should be used to nullify them and ensure one's progress. Such systematic clearing of thought brings the peace of God that passes all human understanding.

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